


boy, you got a prayer in memphis

by awkwardspiritanimals



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, road trip fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:29:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re in Memphis, and Trip has barely stopped singing the Marc Cohn song since they’d passed the city limits.</p>
<p>(a tiny insert fic for 'let's make a harmony and life will sing (city in the rearview and nothing in the distance)' or simply 'the road trip fic')</p>
            </blockquote>





	boy, you got a prayer in memphis

They’re in Memphis, and Trip has barely stopped singing the Marc Cohn song since they’d passed the city limits. Even now, Fitz can still hear him mumbling his way through the chorus in the other room, and the thump of what he assumes is something that Skye had thrown at him hitting the wall. Trip laughs and Skye throws something else, resulting in another thump that makes Fitz smile.

It’s been a week since the two of them had kissed while sitting at what Trip swore was the world’s longest red light, and Jemma and Fitz have been trying to give them as much alone time as possible when they’re all spending most of their time together in a van and all four of them are still a little unsettled by letting any of the others out of their sight. It seemed like the nice thing to do as their friends, especially since, for all their teasing, Trip and Skye had tried to give the two of them as much space as they could manage after Jemma had kissed Fitz the morning after they’d camped at the lake.

Trip had wanted to actually walk around the city, probably singing the song, but it had been raining, which he had seemed just as happy about, and Skye had booked them a suite so they could stay the night and walk around tomorrow. They’d stopped for pizza and snacks at a convenience store, and then Skye had stolen Scrabble from a games shelf in the lobby, even though they’d all known Jemma was just going to crush them every time. She’d won three straight games and been well on her way to a fourth victory when Trip finally glanced at the clock on the microwave, and suggested that, since it was almost one in the morning, they might want to go to bed if they wanted to get an early start in the morning.

Skye had thrown a handful of popcorn at his face, but she’d followed him out into the living room area, to continue their argument or watch tv or get ready for bed or whatever. Fitz stays at the table in the kitchen, playing with the Scrabble tiles instead of actually putting the game away and watching Jemma as she cleans up the trash from their dinner, humming a familiar song softly. At this rate, they’re all going to have it stuck in their heads for a month.

He spells out _LOVE_ without really meaning to, just rearranging tiles without paying much attention, and then stares at it for a few seconds before glancing up at Jemma with a smile. It’s probably too early he thinks, except there’s ten years and an open cargo door and the bottom of the ocean and hundreds of miles of road behind them and, Fitz hopes, hundreds of miles of road in front of them.

Plus, she probably already knows. But there’s a difference between knowing it because of everything that’s happened between them and knowing it because he’s actually said- or well, spelled it out on a Scrabble board- so he searches for the other four tiles he needs, knowing Jemma will turn around to clean it up at some point. The rest of them would all be fine leaving it until tomorrow, but she’ll want to put it away before she goes to bed, which means she’ll definitely see the message tonight. Fitz grips the table to keep himself from mixing the tiles back into the main group, one knee bouncing nervously.

Jemma doesn’t notice the message for five seconds, ten seconds after she turns back to the table, and Fitz is trying to decide if he really wants her to see it or if he’ll be alright if she just sweeps it into the box with the rest of the letters when she freezes and then looks up at him with wide eyes.

“Really?” she says after a few seconds, and Fitz laughs, nodding.

“Yeah. Of course.” He’s never in his life been this glad he decided to say something.

She smiles back and then reaches across the table, grabbing a fistful of his shirt so that she can pull him up and press her lips against his. The angle is awkward and the table is pressing uncomfortably against his hips, but since he’s kissing Jemma he barely registers either thing. When they finally run out of breath, they pull back, both still grinning, and Jemma reaches down and carefully spins the board so that it faces Fitz instead; the letters spread out a little with the motion, but are message is still readable: _I LOVE YOU_.

“You know at some point, we’re probably going to have to actually say it out loud, right?” Jemma says, and Fitz nods, leans in to kiss her again when Skye’s voice interrupts.

“Oh my god, Leopold, that was your cue,” she says, and he turns to see her and Trip standing in the doorway, “Seriously, you’re bad at this.”

“It’s really kind of pathetic,” Trip adds, but then nods toward the Scrabble board, “That’s pretty smooth though.”

“Weren’t you guys going to bed or watching tv or something?” Fitz asks, and Trip shrugs.

“We figured that we can just sleep in tomorrow, and why get your ass kicked by Jemma Simmons only three times when you can do it six or seven times,” he explains.

“There’s no way I’m going to put up with Fitz’s terrible spelling for six games. I’ll just go down to the lobby and steal another game.”

“Is that allowed?” Jemma asks as they set the game up.

“With the amount of money I’m- sorry, Coulson is paying for us to stay here, I’m pretty sure I should be allowed to steal the fridge from in here if I want.”

They all laugh, and when Fitz notices that Trip and Skye are holding hands underneath the table, he decides that despite being called pathetic, he’s willing to wait one more day before teasing them. Instead, he reaches for Jemma’s hand and wonders if there has ever been a single word in the English language with a _q_ , a _k_ _and_ a _w_.

**Author's Note:**

> an insert to road trip fic that i wrote for a friend's birthday, with the prompts "things you said in a hotel room/things you said at 1 am/things you said at the kitchen table"
> 
> the song that would go with this section and that the title is taken from is ‘walking in memphis’ by marc cohn, and it would go between ‘put your records on’ and ‘anna sun’ in the soundtrack
> 
> (will i ever get over how little tripfitzskimmons we ended up getting in canon? not in this life)


End file.
